heartofdakota.com

Hello,

I just recently discovered Little Hearts for His Glory and am really excited about it. This fall will be my first year homeschooling my daughter who will turn 5 yrs at the end of August. I am disappointed to find out that Heart of Dakota will not have a booth at our homeschool convention here in Wichita, KS this weekend. I had so hoped to get my hands on the curriculum to help make my final decision. Is there a way to find out what science topics are covered throughout the year? I also am very torn on using Phonic Pathways or the programs that are recommended. Anyone have thoughts on that?

thank you,
Erin

HI!

I'll try to help you out here. I am just finishing up LHFHG with my ds. We used the K option for science and the text is set up by the days of creation. Each chapter gives a basic understanding of what happened that day. For example, Day 1 covers light (and Carrie has a hands on activity or two) to coordinate with the text. Day 2 has water activities. Day 3, you study the layers of soil. Day 4, how the sun, moon, and earth relate to each other. Day 5, parts of fish and birds. Day 6, animals and man. For man it has several different body parts to study (nose, eyes, etc.). A couple of weeks ago, we learned the basic digestive tract. LHFHG is not set up to follow the science text in order, rather it ties the science lessons in with the history for the week, so you do jump around quite a bit.
Many other topics are included in the hands on activities, but basically it just gives a light introduction to general science.

I hope this is able to help you. This was our first year hsing, as well as our first year of HOD. I can tell you it REALLY made our year run smoothly and made me feel confident that my ds was not 'falling behind'! I have seen my ds grow in his confidence as well. HOD truly is a Christ-centered program that builds a wonderful foundation in those sweet, soft hearts of our little ones. Just the other day, my ds approached a woman in a store (with me following HIS lead) and asked her if she knew about Jesus. I believe that would not have even crossed his mind if we were not readily able and encouraged to weave Christ through our ENTIRE day.

I'm sure other ladies will comment here. If you do not see any responses soon, ask your question on the main board, most posts there are viewed more frequently.

Blessings on your decision!
Rochelle
DS 6 - finishing LHFHG, on to Beyond in the fall
DD 3 - tagging along!

Erin,

Rochelle did a terrific job of answering your questions. I'll just move your post over to the Main Board so that more moms will see it too. All new posts begin on the Main Board.

Blessings,
Carrie

Hi Erin, and welcome to the HOD Board! We have used LHFHG twice with our dc and loved it both times. The science is very hands-on, and our kids just had a blast with it! I liked the tie-in to the history, as it just made more good connections. For phonics, HOD recommends "The Reading Lesson" or "Reading Made Easy", but any phonics will work with HOD. I think they are both excellent phonics programs, but here are some links you can read about them...

Carrie compares The Reading Lesson and Reading Made Easy
viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2503

The Reading Lesson:
viewtopic.php?f=6&t=5541

HTH - we have loved using HOD, and I think you will too! I'm looking forward to getting to know you here.
In Christ,
Julie

After a lot of reasearch, I chose phonics pathways to use this year with BLHFHG with my first grader. After viewing sample pages from all three programs and reading reviews, I just felt that phonics pathways was laid out in a way that would benefit my daughter. I'm new to HOD this year, so it was a very overwhelming time to try and figure everything out. The only changes I made was to go with phonics pathways and a reason for handwriting A instead of what's in the HOD curriclum. I'm thinking of matching ph. pthwys. with the explode the code online. To kind of stay on track with HOD's guide book, we will be starting PP in a couple of weeks. I think she'll be able to start with the first emerging reader with no problem if we start phonics a bit earlier than everything else, and by the middle of the year we should be pretty much done with the phonics work. I also think she'll be ready to do the copywork assigned in HOD by the middle of the 'school year.'

She started her kindergarten year in the public schools, and unfortunately the schools here use a very heavy sight word curriculum. When we pulled her out in October, her dad still wanted her to go back to school for first grade. After much prayer on mom's part , daddy agreed with homeschooling. Unfortunately, I was teaching her sight words and little phonics to prepare her for first grade in p.s., so now we need to basically start from scratch with the phonics. I was torn between LHFHG and BLHFHG because of the reading level. But she's way ahead of everything but the reading in LHFHG, where she's right on level, so I'm just gonna do some summer work to basically play catch up so we can dive right into BLHFHG with no problems.

Rhyah

I was cleaning out some things and came across this list of science topics that I had made when we did LHFHG and thought it might help you. These are the science explorations by unit as I interpreted them in LHFHG.

Light, colors, textures, shapes, sizes
Land Animals/Sea Animals

Sounds and Listening
Buoyancy/Boats

Stars
Smell

What makes Plants Grow
Living/Nonliving

Clouds/rain
Quail/flight

Soil layers
Day/Night/Sun/Moon

Push/Pull
Barley/Grain

Reasoning/Guessing Hidden Object
Temple/Spirit of God

Skin/Soap
Buoyancy

Camouflage
Shadows

Vibrations and sound
Stars

Fish
Water-Liquid/Vapor/Condensation

Surface Tension
Making Bread

Reflections
Fingerprints/Individuality

Sight
Clean/Dirty/Old/New

Roosters/Sunrise
Day/Night

Air Bubbles in Liquid
Fire/Spirit

Stars in the Day
Beasts of the Earth

Primary/Secondary Colors
Taste

Parts of a Tree
Sound/Hearing

Earth-flat vs. round
Canal

Digestion
Absorbancy

Spring
Fall/Harvest

Buoyancy of salt water
Different Kinds of Land

Writing Utensils
Grassland Habitat

Seasons
Winter

Milking a Cow
Trees/Leaves

Sun/Moon
Sun/Times of Day

Friction/Heat
Breakable things

Horses
Cats

Plants/Peanuts
Compass Directions

Water/Steam/Geysers
Solutions/Dissolving

Pendulum
Rocks

Life Cycle of a Butterfly
Liquid/Shape/Form

I hope that is useful for you.

Thank you to everyone for your responses, they were all helpful! This message board is fantastic, love the quick and helpful responses

Blessings,
Erin